Sunday, May 30, 2010

Slow Burn Songs

I love long, slow-building songs -- the ones that begin at a slow walk, and build way the hell up as they go.

As opposed to songs that last for a long time at a slow simmer, like Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead." Or long songs that start at a high heat and try to get even higher, like Melissa Etheridge's "Like The Way I Do." Both of those can be good, too, but it's a different kind of energy. And then there's the famous power ballad style of loud-soft-loud, about which the less said the better.

I was thinking about songs like that recently, and realized this would be a great excuse to play with one of my favorite Amazon widgets again. The down side is that you really don't get a good sense of what I like about these songs in thirty second snippets. But it's got to be better than nothing, right?

So here's the list I came up with:
  • Josh Ritter, "Thin Blue Flame"
  • live version of Richard and Linda Thompson's "Calvary Cross"
  • Local H, "Hand to Mouth"
  • Harvey Danger, "Radio Silence" (unavailable in the widget, but it's on YouTube)
  • Okkervil River, "So Come Back, I Am Waiting"
  • U2, "All I Want Is You"
  • Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Hallelujah"
  • Eagles, "The Last Resort"
  • Peter Gabriel, "Biko"
  • Cracker, "Dixie Babylon"
  • Dandy Warhols, "Be-In"
  • Sinead O'Connor, "Troy"
  • Camper Van Beethoven, "Civil Disobedience" (also unavailable in the widget, but it's on iLike)
  • Dire Straits, "Romeo & Juliet"
  • The New Frontiers, "Who Will Give Us Love?"
  • Ambulance Ltd., "Stay Where You Are"
  • Elvis Costello, "Battered Old Bird"
  • Rachel Smith, "Juanita"
  • Bodies of Water, "I Guess I'll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I Guess"
  • Rilo Kiley, "Always" (yet another song unavailable in the widget, it's also on iLike)
  • Modest Mouse, "Parting of the Sensory"
And here's the widget:

What songs do you like that have that pattern?

1 comment:

DMDavid said...

I like this sort of song too, so your post turned me on to some new treats. Thank you for that.

Peter Gabriel's "Lay Your Hands Me" nearly matches the drama of "Biko". In concert, Gabriel used to finish "Lay Your Hands Me" by falling backward into the hands of the audience and crowd surfing. For a more recent slow-burn song, check out Airborne Toxic Event's "Sometime Around Midnight".

I wish I could think of more, but my memory fails me.

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